by Ty Tashiro
In another study of emotion processing, researchers at the University of North Carolina used fMRI to image the brains of awkward versus non-awkward participants while they were asked to identify emotions from photos of faces. They found that awkward participants performed just as well as non-awkward participants on the emotion recognition task, but imaging results showed that during these tasks, awkward participants had reduced activity in areas typically recruited for emotion recognition and they showed hyperactivity in regions usually associated with nonsocial problem solving. It’s a remarkable pattern of findings that is evident in other imaging studies and suggests that while awkward individuals may not intuitively process social information the same way as most people, they find work-arounds to solve social puzzles.
When awkward people do look at someone’s face, they tend to use a bottom-up style of processing, which means that they initially gravitate toward individual facial features rather than seeing the face as an integrated whole. Socially fluent people see a face and instantly know that someone is happy . But awkward people see a mouth—)—and then eyes—:—before they put those two pieces together to reach a conclusion that someone is happy—:)
In this example, the awkward person reaches the same conclusion as non-awkward people, which is that the person’s facial expression is indicative of happiness, but the process for awkward people is more laborious and the conclusion they reach is qualitatively different—:)—than the one reached by non-awkward people who process faces holistically: This provides a good example of how awkward people process social information as pieces of a puzzle to be solved versus a scenario naturally processed all at once by their social brain.
However, when awkward individuals are reminded to look at faces for emotional cues, they direct their attention to faces far more quickly and their empathic accuracy improves. This suggests one of the key footholds for how awkward people might cope with their awkward tendencies is to find ways to focus their attention on the right things. Studies that look at what happens when people have nothing to think about or let their minds wander show that non-awkward people tend to keep their social brain running at all times, even when there is no social activity. By comparison, awkward people do not seem to keep their social brain running at all times and might need to be reminded to turn the ignition on for their social brain.
How Did My Foot Get in My Mouth?
WHILE I TRIED to decipher Kellie’s nonverbal cues and read the intent in her eyes, I was also trying to come up with something clever to say. Never before had I been in a position to say something romantic and I quickly learned how hard it is to strike the right tone while delivering such a delicate message. Once she whispered her ambiguous statement, “I’ve never felt this way about a friend before . . . ,” I was completely at a loss for what would be an appropriate way to respond.
Awkward individuals have difficulties with both comprehension and articulation. We know from awkward participants’ responses to measures like the Autism Quotient that they are more likely than socially fluent people to have difficulty with pragmatic language, which refers to the ability to communicate effectively during social conversations. Let’s take a look at four areas of research that can help us understand these difficulties with pragmatic language: extracting meaning from what others say, saying too much, not knowing what to say, and inadvertently being too blunt.
When it comes to comprehension, awkward people have trouble with things like extracting the unspoken meanings conveyed during social conversations, and comprehending sarcasm and some jokes. But even when awkward participants’ verbal IQ scores are average or above average, they still show difficulties extracting the intended meaning from social conversations. However, awkward adults also show comparable performance to socially fluent people on reading comprehension tasks that require them to infer the thoughts and feelings of characters in stories, which suggests that they extract deeper meanings from written communication.
Figure 3.1 Another helpful framework for decoding emotions is thinking about how they are organized. Researchers find that emotions can be organized around two axes. The horizontal axis represents whether someone evaluates his or her current feelings as negative or positive. The vertical axis represents how physiologically aroused people become.
Although researchers have yet to figure out the precise reasons for awkward individuals’ language comprehension problems, there are many plausible hypotheses. Perhaps awkward individuals’ difficulties picking up nonverbal cues and facial cues account for their social comprehension deficits. Alternatively, they might have trouble making use of information from vocal cues such as cadence or vocal tone. Regardless of the mechanism, it’s helpful to know that awkward people have difficulty understanding the true meaning or intent from some social conversations, which certainly makes it harder for them to know what to say or how to say it.
Awkward individuals report that they are unsure about what they should say in social situations. They struggle with things that come naturally to others, such as what to say while initiating a casual social interaction or engaging in small talk. Awkward people have many interesting things to say, but it’s like they are a book missing the preface and first chapter, those early sections where the author and reader get acquainted with each other before diving into deeper material.
If awkward people want to become more comfortable about what to say, then they can benefit from knowing what most people like to talk about. There is unequivocal evidence from hundreds of studies that people most often talk about topics that are social in nature. People love to talk about relationships, whether it’s strategizing about how to resolve a conflict with a coworker or the latest drama from the Kardashians. When people talk about relationships they are able to further process their social conundrums and garner valuable feedback from friends. Most people also enjoy gossip, which usually carries a negative connotation, but gossip can be positive or negative conversations. For example, both of these statements would be considered gossip: “Ellen is really smart, you should talk to her” and “Barbara should not be trusted.”
When some awkward individuals do speak, they have trouble knowing when to stop talking. Awkward people are prone to lecturing instead of having a conversation and no one likes to be lectured. When they fall into lecture mode, it tends to be about their nonsocial interests, and some awkward individuals speak with an intonation that sounds condescending even if they do not intend for their voice to carry that tone. It’s easy to imagine how a conversation partner could leave an interaction feeling as if he had just been a passive bystander to a lengthy diatribe.
A LIST OF FIVE THINGS TO SAY
Good conversations are triggered by your ability to get the other people to talk about their interests. Here’s a list of standard small talk questions and alternative questions that can produce more engaged dialogue.
1.“What do you do?” “Tell me about what interests you right now?”
2.“How did you meet Andie?” “Will you tell me the story of how you and Andie met?”
3.“How are you?” “What are you looking forward to this week/weekend?”
4.“Where are you from?” “What do you enjoy about living in New York?”
5.“How’s work?” “What do you hope will have happened at work one year from now?”
In most instances, awkward people do not intend to bore others or come across as condescending, which raises the question of why they would elect to lecture instead of have a back-and-forth conversation. Recall that awkward people’s minds are not mulling through social information during times of inactivity, which means that they would have spent less time mulling over social information and have less to say about social topics. But awkward people may think a lot about things like World of Warcraft, deforestation, or whether winter is really coming on Game of Thrones. It’s understandable that if these are the topics people know, then they would talk about what they know and what interests them. If they are talking with someone
who is also obsessed with World of Warcraft or global warming, then there’s no problem because both sides have the knowledge to participate in the conversation. But when awkward people speak with people who are not obsessed with their nonsocial interests and instead want to take a deep dive into a social topic, then the awkward person may subconsciously prevent a back-and-forth discussion about unfamiliar topics by lecturing in a sort of social filibuster.
When awkward people fall into lecture mode, one of the risks they run is turning an offensive comment into an offensive monologue. To consider why awkward people are more prone to inadvertently offending others or putting their foot in their mouth, it’s helpful to think about the distinction between being right versus being socially correct. Being right is about whether what you say is objectively true, but saying something socially correct is about whether you say something to propel an interesting or useful conversation.
As I danced with Kellie and my mind searched for something clever to say, some of the first thoughts about sweet nothings to whisper in her ear included, “You smell like a field of strawberries” or “Our eyeballs are almost touching.” Fortunately, I managed to keep these accurate but socially incorrect statements from escaping my mouth. I have certainly heard worse. Like an instance when my friend Elias was telling a group of new acquaintances at a party that “things just didn’t work out” with his ex-girlfriend. It was his way of saying, “Can we brush over that topic for now?” Another friend, Steve, who was pretty awkward and who was already privy to the full story of Elias’s breakup, did not get the deeper meaning from Elias’s statement. Steve blurted out a rhetorical question for editorial clarification: “Elias, didn’t you break up because she cheated on you?” This was technically right, but far from socially correct. Other people understandably perceive these kinds of true but socially incorrect statements as offensive or malicious. But awkward people are mortified once they understand just how socially incorrect their statements sound.
Awkward people begin to realize they have a way of putting their foot in their mouth because they misunderstand what others are trying to tell them. Because of this, awkward people can become hesitant to say anything at all because they do not want to risk saying something offensive and feel self-conscious about sharing their unusual interests with others.
The key to your conversation partner enjoying her interaction with you relies more upon how you respond to what she is saying than your ability to say something clever or demonstrating how much you know. Becoming a better communicator and building rapport with others is about encouraging them to talk about things that interest them and conveying empathy for what they are trying to tell you. When you show your genuine interest in what others have to say, the deeper message you send is that you are invested in their well-being. Showing you are invested in what others have to say taps into their evolved need to find people who are likely to be interested in their welfare.
When Minds Meander
WHEN I HEARD the delicate melody of “Open Arms” swell into the final chorus, I felt my heart rate speed up and my thoughts began to race. There were so many intense cues: Kellie holding me tightly against her, her lips hinting at a pucker, and the soft whisper of the vexing “friend” comment. It was too much for my social mind to handle. So I guess that’s why something more primal than my book smarts region or social brain took over, and I made a decisive move to bridge the remaining 1.5 inches between my lips and hers.
However, there was a less than intuitive combination of social cues that I had not considered and it was my oversight of these that left me with a mouthful of Kellie’s luxurious blond hair. When you are twelve years old, this sort of rejection can sting for quite some time. Later, the logical part of my mind realized that I was going through the kind of classic teenage angst that I had read about in my Judy Blume books. The kind of minor problem that was small in the continuum of problems in the world. Yet the emotional part of my mind recalled that fateful night with sadness, at other times disappointment, and sometimes the memory felt so real that my face flushed with embarrassment or my heart sank with disappointment.
Yet the Kellie Kimpton moment was a boost of encouragement in other ways. It was a sign that my efforts to build social skills might be paying off. I was noticing a broader range of social cues and slowly beginning to improve my accuracy with interpreting those cues. It was a methodical, plodding effort to inch forward a little bit with each passing day, but I began to see that I was finding a social rhythm.
My efforts to figure out the nuances of social life felt like those times in music class when our teacher asked all of us to clap along to the beat. As someone with a poor sense of rhythm, I found this simple task to be remarkably difficult. Technically, I would clap my hands together, it’s just that I was not clapping them to the beat. I heard the beat and could watch others clapping to the beat, but the more I concentrated on putting my hands together in step with everyone else, the more I became off the beat. Popular wisdom tells us to “move to the beat of your own drum,” but we all know that navigating social life is never that simple. You have to admire the chutzpah of the awkward because they try to find the beat despite their self-awareness that other people are noticing that they are not quite getting it. For the awkward person who is trying to get the social beat through trial and error, there’s a persistent anxiety because social errors take place in the public domain for all to see, and when we consistently fall short of social expectations we risk one of the worst possible human outcomes: being ostracized.
Alternatively, few things in life feel better than the sense that we are in synchrony with those around us. Something as simple as clapping in unison with strangers who like the same brand of hip-hop can give us the sense that we are part of something larger than ourselves. Although there are valuable scientific findings regarding how nonverbal behaviors, facial expressions, and pragmatic language are interpreted and expressed, the moment-to-moment detection, interpretation, and use of these social gestures is an art form. They are not silly embellishments or luxuries, but rather essential ingredients to understanding what people are trying to tell you and they are necessary for clearly communicating one’s good intent.
Later that spring at a track meet, Kellie and I sat side by side on the infield while her boyfriend prepared to run the 4 × 200 relay. Since the Winter Wonderland dance we had maintained our collegial relationship in Spanish II, and even though there was a shared awkward memory between us, a comfortable fondness remained as well, which continued to grow.
It took me a long time, well into adulthood, to learn that moving toward a deeper level of emotional connection with someone can be like a game of chicken. When two people first begin to gather emotional momentum, it’s an intense feeling that is so good, they fear the feeling could burst. They feel the rush of speeding toward something unknown and as they near the point of contact, their feelings can grow so intense that a protective mechanism switches on at the last second. A mechanism that leads one or both of them to turn away.
From the corner of my prescription-lens–covered peripheral vision, I saw that Kellie’s attention was not directed toward the track, but focused instead somewhere just in front of my left ear. I pretended not to notice. Eventually, her intense gaze overpowered my willful ignorance and like a tractor beam she pulled me into eye contact. Then, Kellie said something very thoughtful, something of precocious maturity:
Kellie: Ty, do you ever think about that time we danced together?
Me: To “Open Arms”? Did you know after that song Journey went on to—
Kellie: Hey, I know that was probably kind of confusing for you.
Me: Oh, I don’t know, I guess that’s—
Kellie: I totally liked you. But I got nervous. I’m so sorry if I hurt your feelings.
Me: Thanks. It’s okay, Kellie. Feelings can be pretty confusing sometimes.
4
EMOTIONS MAKE ME FEEL FUNNY
Ellie and her parents sat eve
nly spaced on the leather couch in my therapy office, their hands neatly folded on their laps. Ellie’s father wore a navy sport coat with a polka-dot bow tie and her mother wore a crisp navy blue linen dress with pearls lying neatly across her neckline. Ellie had chosen a pink-and-white-striped seersucker dress and her mother had methodically woven Ellie’s brunette hair into a neat braid. They looked like a living J.Crew catalog and this snapshot made it difficult for me to imagine Ellie as a five-year-old capable of wielding emotional upheaval upon a household.
I began counseling Ellie during my second year of graduate school. At that point in my training, the senior clinicians who had been supervising my counseling work were pushing me to explore my clients’ emotional lives, but I had a hard time understanding why delving deeper into a client’s negative emotions would alleviate his depression, anxiety, or anger. I saw emotions as an impediment to well-reasoned insights. So I always felt uneasy when I tried to ask a client the clichéd therapist question, “So, how does that make you feel?” Until I saw Ellie, I never understood why emotions are integral to understanding what makes people tick and how they bring together disparate social cues into a coherent whole.
Ellie’s parents were physicians who spoke in fluent DSM-IV terminology while they described her temper tantrums as “. . . acute, chronic, and severe.” Her outbursts included sudden bursts of intense screaming in public and hitting or biting her parents. The tantrums sometimes lasted for hours. At times Ellie became so enraged in restaurants or stores that her parents had to physically restrain her with a bear hug while rushing her outside. Lately, Ellie responded to these “carry outs” by repeatedly screaming, “Help me!” which created more than an awkward situation for everyone involved.